Do people still hand out physical business cards at events or is it all digital now?

i should have asked before ordering 50, lol

EDIT:

Thank you for all the replies, I’ve got the answer I need but I’ll add some more information just in case anyone wants to know.

  • I’m based in Europe and not Japan
  • I’m working as a videographer and trying to build a film company
  • I plan on doing more event coverage so I’ll bring them with to quickly hand out my contact details.
  • The card has the following: Busines name, my name, phone number, email, and website.
  • I had thought about adding my social media but couldn’t find a nice way to do it that matched the rest of the card.

EDIT 2: just now realised I didn’t complete the last sentence of the last bullet point

  • MudMan@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    For a while I stopped bringing cards to situations where a card would be a thing and instead I put a QR code on a widget on my phone’s lock screen and told people to just scan that to add my contact info.

    Results were… mixed? For a few people it was a cool conversation starter. Others fumbled a bit with what to do.

    One guy, though? He was NOT amused. Apparently he made a big point of collecting all of his connections’ cards in binders, and cataloguing them, both as bragging rights and a hobby. I may as well have walked into his house and peed on his stamp collection. It was very awkward.

  • PolydoreSmith@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I carry them because I’m a professional musician and I just get sick of spelling my name for people. It has my booking email, instagram, and phone number on it. Super handy.

  • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Sure, if you deal with customer

    It’s still a nice way to get someone coordinates, like who is the sales person, or the tech support tech, or the researcher.

    If you go to conference/trade fairs people willstill exchange cards.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It is about the act of giving that physical thing to someone, like a present.

    It helps with building a connection to people. It cannot be replaced by anything ‘digital’.

    (Even if everybody scans them or photographs them later, in order to bring the data into the digital address book LOL)

  • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I handed out 4 just yesterday. I guess it depends on the kind of work you’re doing. I’m a home improvement contractor and people often ask if they can give my number to their friend/neighbour etc. so I just hand them few business cards to spread around.

  • Today@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I do. People usually don’t have time to chat when i stop by so i drop a card and ask them to reach out. I get them at Staples. Dony remember the exact price - maybe about $40 for 500.

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
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    5 months ago

    Yes. Not as important as they used to be, but they’re still highly useful in some situation. I use(d) them a lot in my current as well as my previous job. Long story short, these jobs involve showing up on site in the middle of nowhere, meeting someone who I’ve never met before. I then set up thingamajig A as well as fix thingamajig B. Before I leave I make sure to leave a card with my contact details in case they have questions or anything more is needed.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Some people like to get super nerdy with them now. If I were in better shape physically, I’d probably etch my own out of some PCB copper clad and mix up some tinning solution.

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Disability. Plus no reason to when I never leave the house or engage with others in meaningful ways.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Ooooooh…yeah, I read it as you saying it would be hard to do with no upper body strength, or if you were really fat.

          By “better shape”, you mean you specifically as an individual. Thats what threw me off. I know nothing of the process, and thought you were saying I couldn’t do it, being fat.

        • wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Heya, I’m in a similar situation. Chatting with other people online is still a great way to learn and pass the time :)

  • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Yeah, they’re really handy. I work for a big company who deals with other big companies, it’s often very helpful to get a specific contact person’s info so a future request isn’t filtered through layers of bureaucracy.

  • Thavron@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    At my job we recently got 15 plastic cards with an NFC chip. Scan the card and you go to a page where you can add the info to your contacts. There’s a qr code for when NFC is disabled and too complex to turn on for some people (i.e. CEO’s and the like).

    This being Lemmy, this’ll probably get comments like “never scan an unknown NFC tag blah blah blah”

    • mvmike@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Why is NFC needed in this case? Regardless of this being a potential security risk (which it is, but it’s not my point here), does it provide any additional value over a QR scan, which can easily store a URL or a contact information?

      • Chozo@fedia.io
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        5 months ago

        Contact images, perhaps? Or maybe just aesthetic purposes with however they’re choosing to distribute their contacts, and don’t want to paste QR codes in places. For contact transfer, I don’t think there’s much technical advantage to using NFC over a QR code, since QR codes can fit a lot more data than most people realize.

      • Thavron@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        Not needed, but convenient. NFC is enabled by default on most phones so all they have to do is touch the card.

          • Thavron@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            NFC: hold to card, done. Qr: unlock phone, open camera, scan, confirm opening link.

            Granted, it’s 4 seconds vs 0,5 second but still.

      • Thavron@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        Yeah but it’s not random. It’s a business card. Surely some trust in other people can be possible.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          If you’re in a vaguely sensitive industry, there’s going to be a few people seeing what they can get into at those conferences.

          This is especially true of things like cyber security conferences, or tech. They’ll be crawling with corporate spies.

          Actually, I’d say any major trade or industry conference is going to have corporate spies and more… eh, freelance trying to see what they can get into.

          So the question becomes: have you/your company run a background check on that guy? No? Then why the hell do you trust him?

          • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            Because he paid $10k for a booth to talk about bird safe window tinting, and can actually answer questions about bird safe window tinting. Dude wants to go through all that work into maybe fooling me into giving up my work login credentials, more power to him.

      • Thurstylark@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        I mean, random NFC tags, I can understand. But, isn’t advising someone to avoid QR codes obsolete by now? It was a pretty worthwhile attack vector at one point, but nowadays most phones will ask “Do you want to <handle> <contents in full>?” before actually doing anything with it…

        Although, now that I think about it, it is best practice to advise to the lowest common denominator… Sometimes I overestimate users’ ability to avoid doing stupid things…

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          That process is safe until it’s not. There may be an exploit there waiting to be discovered. Thst exploit will never happen if you just don’t.

  • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 months ago

    I don’t need business cards, but I want to get some nice ones with just my name that I can write the information I want people to have.
    I guess it’s more of a calling card, really.

  • rasterweb@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    Yes. I work for a small company and we do give out business cards at events if someone asks or if we really hope they’ll follow up with us later. To me they often serve more as a helpful reminder more than a device to convey contact information.